Marin County Office of Education developed the ATLAS (Advancing Teaching and Learning in the Arts and Sciences) grant to provide professional learning in STEAM education and to support an inclusive approach to Visual and Performing Arts Education.

We anticipate our grant resources directly reaching across the entire North Bay region, with an emphasis on our two largest districts (Novato and San Rafael) that serve the highest proportion of high need students.

The ATLAS grant was designed to support an inclusive approach to arts education, with specific professional learning events arts, tailored to special education teachers and paraprofessionals, provided through the nonprofit organization, Youth in Arts. In addition, to these customized events, Youth in Arts has placed resident artists in fourteen special day classrooms, and will develop Open Educational Resources for inclusive arts education, that we will film, and, will be distributed and made available to all educators within our region and beyond. Our entire community is very much in need of arts support.

A recent survey of educators planning to participate in the ATLAS Summer STEAM Institute indicated that the majority are familiar with the state's Mathematics, Science, and English Language Arts standards, but only 4% are "familiar" with the Visual and Performing Arts Standards, and only 16% currently develop STEAM lessons.

For some educators, arts integration was the motivating factor for choosing to engage in this summer's institute - as one educator said, "I am interested in further developing my craft in integrating content areas with the sciences and arts;" and another described "I wanted to have a better understanding for STEAM and develop STEAM units," still, a third said, "I am hoping to learn more about STEAM and how to incorporate it into my classroom to make learning more fun!"

BUILDING THE FUTURE . . . ONE STUDENT AT A TIME

Learn more about the projects funded by Marin County Office of Education's SSAE grant here:

Painting to Music at Rancho Elementary School

Lynwood Students Build Sculptures and Learn Pattern and Form

Mask Making at Novato High

Keynote Speeches at the STEAM workshop for the Marin County Office of ED